Review of The Underground Girls of Kabul: In search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg

This book provides a revealing look at females living as males in Afghanistan. Families with only girl children may designate one of the girls to be a boy. She will be dressed in boy's clothing and allowed to interact with outsiders as a boy. She will have much more freedom in movement and contact with boys and men than her sisters will. Girls (and women) have very little status in Afghanistan. Designating a child to be a male gives a woman more status to the outside world. Women with only female children risk the threat of having their husbands take a second wife so that the family will have a male heir.
Many of these girls will revert to being a female when they reach puberty and are of marriageable age. But some remain in their status as males to the outside world because it gives them much more freedom. Since they have grown up being able to speak and think for themselves they don't want to give this up.
Afghanistan is not the only country in which the practice of dressing girls as boys is done. It has been done in places where the status of women is low. The author states that the situation of women in these places will only change when men support women having equal status and rights.

Review of The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks

This graphic novel covers an important part in our country's history that is too little known about. It tells the story of the 369th Infantry Regiment, an all black unit, that fought in World War I. They faced racial discrimination at home and abroad. This unit was called "the "Harlem Hellfighters" by the Germans. They were known for their bravery and willingness to give all they had to the fight. Canaan White's illustrations of the horrors of war really make an impact on the story. They bring home the conditions that these men had to survive under.

Review of The Witch by Jean Thompson

The stories in this book were a mixed bag for me. Some of them were engaging and interesting, others less so. I liked the fairy tale element in them. Some were easy to identify. Others were more obscure. The characters in these stories were well drawn but not people that I would readily identify with.

Review of The Mathematician's Shiva by Stuart Rojstaczer

This was an engrossing story about the life of a mathematician from the point of view of her son. It showed what mathematicians are like and how they pursue problems. It also showed how disconnected from the world they can be socially. The novel succeeded in delineating the influences on mathematicians and their insular world.

Review of Your Face In Mine by Jess Row

This is a book about how people see themselves and how they fit into the world around them. It's about what each individual regards as desirable physically and culturally.

The main character, Kelly, a caucasian male, was married to a Chinese woman. He had met her when he went to China to study. Eventually they returned to the U.S.  Kelly had been working on an advanced degree at Harvard when he and his wife had a daughter. Realizing that he wanted a steady paycheck at this point in his life, he took a position at a public radio station in the Boston area. A couple of years later his wife and daughter are killed in an automobile accident. Kelly is depressed and wants to move somewhere else where he hopes the memories won't be so strong. He accepts a position at another public radio station in Baltimore where he spent his teenage years. There he happens to meet up with a friend, Martin, whom he hasn't seen in twenty years. But now the friend looks like a black man.

Martin is a businessman. He wants Kelly to craft a story about how he, Martin, reached the decision to have "racial reassignment surgery" so that he can promote a business that will provide this service to the world and be viewed as acceptable and desirable.

Review of Trapped Under the Sea by Neil Swidey

This book is about the end stage of the building of the 10-mile long sewer tunnel under Boston Harbor. The entire undertaking was an amazing feat of engineering, but the long drawn out and over budget project resulted in a disaster that cost lives. The author recounts in great detail the engineering and management challenges along the way. He brings to life the people who were involved, their various roles and actions and the results.

The book starts out with a horrifying scene in which divers near the end of 10-mile tunnel far under the ocean experience equipment failure that you know will result in deaths. The author then cuts from this scene to give us the background of the project and details about the individuals involved. The engineering is explained well enough that a lay person can understand. I highly recommend this book for its riveting story.

More information about the book: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/209340/trapped-under-the-sea-by-neil-swidey
Information about the author, Neil Swidey: http://www.randomhouse.com/author/129167/neil-swidey

I receive this book for free from Blogging For Books for this review.

Review of Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

Jane Jenkins, the privileged child of a socially correct and high society mother has just been released from prison after 10 years on a technicality. She was only 16 when she was sentenced to prison for the murder of her mother. Jenkins has problems with her memory due to drug use as a teenager and cannot even remember what happened on the day that her mother died. She's not sure if she really killed her mother but her lawyer, Noah, believes that she is innocent.
Noah provides Jane with a new identity and she takes off to try to find out if there was anyone in her mother's past that might have wanted her mother dead. Jane ends up in a small town in South Dakota and slowly uncovers its secrets and her own family background.
I didn't like the character of Jane at first because I thought that she was too smart-mouthed and shallow, But as the book progressed, Jane's character grew on me. She turned out to be an astute detective who unearths the truth about her mother's murder.